Daniel123

- Holding democracy / capitalism / communism / socialism etc. as the best form of government - obeying traffic laws (or any law for that matter) - manners, politeness, social skills - saying 'bless you' after someone sneezes

Very interesting, please keep us updated when the study is published, I would really like to read it.

We spend so much time during our daily lives thinking and seeing the outside world that the head oftentimes becomes the primary center of the sense of 'I'. When you sit down and close your eyes, this sense still lingers out of habit. You may notice you have this subtle concept of yourself sitting there, picturing your posture and surroundings, but this is just a creation of the mind trying to uphold an image of yourself. There is no direct experience of being somewhere or being someone at this point, it's just thoughts and memories. Notice that arising concept and ease your grip on it, let it slide repeatedly and widen naturally over time and the feeling of being located behind the eyes will slowly diminish more and more.

I really enjoy these tribal sounds

Personally I use the Perform Plant Protein from Vivolife. They get third party labs to test each of their protein powders for heavy metals. Here is a list of tested whey protein powders that seem safe https://cleanlabelproject.org/protein-study-2-0/

I can't speak for smoking, but whenever I use strong rapé (the shamanic tobacco snuff they give you at ceremonies), it puts me into wildly different states of consciousness with highly diminished ego. It also has an interesting energetic component for me as well.

@WonderSeeker Thanks for the input, that is indeed a good question to ask. I think what bothers me most is having to be so secretive about it. It's not even really that I want to talk about psychedelics with others at length. But for example, when someone asks about my wweekend plans and I am going to do a session, I am forced to veil reality / lie about it. It feels like this pulls me out of alignment a bit and feels contracting, because I have to be careful not exposing part of myself to not get in legal trouble or societal trouble. But maybe this is just a worthwhile sacrifice that is necessary to do this kind of work.

How does Kriya Yoga compare with rhythmic breathwork / shamanic breathwork / holotropic breathing in terms of depth and intensity?

This is an interesting epistemiological problem. The alteration of neural activity and DMN regulation could just be a correlation. Maybe this is an effect rather than the cause of altered consciousness. For me the question is, what does it take to conclude the cause of the altered perception of reality? Does logic and rationality together with empirical data from the brain suffice or is it still guesswork at this point? It also depends on whether you look at it from a materialist or idealist viewpoint.

Thank you for your perspectives, that is really helpful! I'll take a look at these books, thanks!

Recently I noticed what a shame it is to not be able to be more open about psychedelic explorations with most other people in society. I guess this is kind of the nature of inner work in general and psychedelics specifically because of the illegality or stigma attached to them. For me, it feels pretty isolating having to hide this part of myself from most others around me. I am reading this book right now titled 'LSD and the mind of the universe' where the author also laments that all his deep explorations had to be kept hidden for most of his life and that conversations with colleagues and even friends started to fizzle out quicker and quicker the more deeply he went on with his experiences. How do you experience this, can you be open with friends, family, colleagues? Does it bother you at all if you can't be?

I saw this guy speak about 5MeO-DMT and he mentioned that taking 5-HTP in the evening after a dose will encourage re-activations.

Just tried it out for a bit, pretty cool! Thanks for sharing, did you create this yourself?

Maybe you could use a LSD test kit on it? What kind of similar substances are you thinking of? LSD-Prodrugs or something more derivative?

I work as a pharmacist